Karen Cronick
Abstract
In this essay we will examine the relationships
that knowledge has with power structures. We will review historical instances
of how deities, kings, and both ecclesiastical and political agents have prohibited
learning, scholarship, understanding, and awareness. We will review historical
data, legends, several literary pieces and news sources. Learning that falls
outside the limits of what a given power set-up accepts as legitimate has often
been unwelcome. Acceptable knowledge is frequently defined by a given religious
dogma or an ideological view. We will begin our essay with reflections about
how religious canons define and limit what knowledge is, and how they
circumscribe what can be recognized as admissible convictions. Then we will
consider how ideological beliefs can act in similar ways. We will contrast
religious, ideological and scientific knowledge, and review how power
structures can limit people’s access to alterative world views.
INTRODUCTION
In this commentary
we will consider how different kinds of knowledge, custom, and culture can be prohibited
or, on the other hand, how they can become socially acceptable, or even
obligatory. We will examine the relationships that knowledge
has with power structures. We will review historical and actual instances of
how deities, kings, and both ecclesiastical and political agents have both prohibited
and promoted learning, scholarship, understanding, and awareness.
This
exploration takes the form of an essay. We will review
historical data, legends, several literary pieces and news sources. Luz
Marina Rivas (2000) has described the essay as a “reflexive and personal text
which does not have the pretension of having the last word.” In describing
essays as “personal” Rivas refers to their open structure, which is not
dominated by hypotheses. That is, the purpose of an essay is not to falsify an
initial proposition in the sense proposed by Popper (1967).[1] It is rather a text that freely explores a
given topic, although it should be clearly based on the thinking of previous
authors and scientific evidence. Thus, we will compare world-views,
vocabularies, and attempts at historical and systematic substantiation. We
offer a new contribution to an old and ongoing discussion.
Learning that
falls outside the limits of what a given power set-up accepts as legitimate has
often been unwelcome. Acceptable knowledge is usually defined by a given religious
dogma or an ideological view. We will begin our essay with reflections about
how religious canons define and limit what knowledge is, and how they
circumscribe what can be recognized as admissible convictions. Then we will
consider how ideological beliefs can act in similar ways. Both of these stances
have conflicted with science, and with each other. Also, religions compete
among themselves, and so do ideologies. Finally, we will examen how knowledge
-especially scientific knowledge- is being challenged in the twenty-first
century and what political issues are at play in these conflicts.
It is
important to observe, from the outset, that we do not dismiss all religions and
ideologies as false knowledge. Many incorporate essential civilizing canons
and insights. For example, early Christianity proposed that humanity could
relate to God in terms of love. It was the first time that people’s
relationship to their deity went beyond respect and sometimes fear.
Christianity also proposed a sense of forgiving brotherhood for mankind itself.
Love was seen as a kind of purification. In a similar way the ideological tradition
of liberal democracy and the rule of law represented a huge and civilizing historical
advance.
To begin, the
history of creeds offers many examples of how new knowledge can be created or rejected.
In this sense, creeds represent a form of knowing, and a way to understand the
world. Different doctrines can coexist at the same time, and the establishment
of a new one is often accompanied by, or followed by, the writing of sacred
volumes to consolidate it and to preserve its oral legends. These writings become dogma which may be interpreted
but not denied.
One legend
that often reappears is a history of the creation of the physical world,
animals and mankind.[2] Accompanying these accounts, over and over we
find an explanation of how humans began to understand their world and their
place in it. These legends recount how many traditional deities felt
apprehension when faced with the possibility of human knowledge.
On the
other hand, some of these immortals did promote culture. For example, Zeus didn’t
want mankind to have access to learning, but Apollo, promoted the awareness of music,
healing, and general education, and Athena championed “wisdom” -among other
things. In the following section we will review how Prometheus brought fire and
other capabilities to earth, and the price he paid for doing so.
In spite of
the prohibitions, many divine creatures have felt the need to educate mankind. And
mankind itself has often felt a persistent and powerful need to know.
There have
been many times in which knowledge -especially scientific knowledge[3]-
has been suspect. It has often been supplanted by ideology or religion. Many
human tyrants have feared that their subjects may know too much, because awareness
is a kind of power. Established sovereignty has often used religion and
ideology as instruments of control. For example, Socrates was executed for
questioning the authority of the Greek gods. In another example, the
destruction of the Library of Alexandria probably originated in religious abhorrence;
there are several accounts for this event, and El-Abbadi (1998) recounts how,
during the reign of Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria at the end of the IV
century B.C.E., at least part of the library was destroyed by Christian
rioters, and its chief librarian, Hypatia, was dragged through the streets and
murdered.[4]
In medieval
times, the Christian religion was the heart of community life in what would
later become Europe. The church was responsible for establishing moral values
and political stability. Religious hierarchies were closely related to
monarchical structures, and the belief in the divine right of kings justified
their power and their unequal access to wealth[5].
The head of Christianity, as a religious establishment, was the papacy whose
leader, the pope, had a determinate influence in the whole region, even though
he had no army. Most medieval kings would have to consult their important decisions
with him. He was sometimes responsible for crowning the kings and
excommunicating or punishing those subjects who opposed the accepted beliefs.
He could call for war. His authority helped maintain the monarchs’ political order,
and therefore the religious hierarchies of the medieval period were crucial.
They provided structure and unity. Thus, heresy, or the questioning or negation
of orthodox beliefs, was severely punished.
Religion
has long been an instrument for validating power. Bentzen & Gokmen (2022)
emphasize religion’s historical role in legitimizing government:
Religion has historically played an important
role in political economy across the world. For instance, the Code of
Hammurabi—one of the first written legal documents—opens with the Gods
designating Hammurabi as the ruler and their representative on earth. This is
an example of divine legitimization through which rulers can refer to
intervening and moralizing gods to justify their authority and facilitate
ruling. It also illustrates how rulers can embed religion into institutions by
transcribing it into the law.[6]
In modern times, the Sharia law exemplifies an extreme case of religion
penetrating the state apparatus.
Slowly,
changes began to occur. Medieval universities began to appear, although at
first their main studies had to do with biblical interpretation, Christian dogma
and Latin. Gradually the students and faculty began to have access to classical
texts, and the works of contemporary philosophers. They were influenced by
translations and transcriptions of Greek and Roman thought that began to emerge
from the Muslim caliphates in Cordoba, in the Iberian Peninsula.[7]
Religion is
not the only belief system to try to suppress alternative beliefs. Ideologies
have conflicted with each other and some of them have tried to suppress
scientific findings. Eric C. Martin (n.d) elucidates the early relationship
between science and philosophy in the Renaissance and the Illustration:
In the 17th century, a constellation of
practices, ideas and institutions among natural philosophers contributed to
what most historians recognize as the advent of modern science. Galileo
Galilei, Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton (all of
whom considered themselves philosophers) wrote texts that subsequent
practitioners lifted up as exemplary of the “new philosophy.” While there was
no universal agreement on exactly what this new philosophy consisted of, some
of the most salient elements included the rejection of Aristotelian forms and
final causes; the attempt to account for most natural phenomena in terms of efficient
causes operating according to laws of nature; the identification and
quantification of objective “primary qualities” such as mass and velocity; and
the introduction of experimental practices using the controlled operation of
idealized or contrived events as evidence for nature’s operation.
Science
itself has been re-interpreted and used for ideological purposes. As Martin (n.d) has pointed out: “Despite science’s
capacities to render some exceedingly clear and well-verified central cases,
its broader uses can become intertwined with separate knowledge claims, values,
and ideologies. Thus, the apparently clear deliverances of natural sciences
have been leveraged to endorse competing views.”
Scientific
results can be misrepresented, and selectively quoted. Furthermore, scientists are
individuals that have their own ideological leanings, and the way they select
phenomena for study, or represent their premises and hypotheses can have
ideological influences. The topics that have to do with current political
concerns such as climate change, immigration restrictions, health issues, or
sexuality may be more vulnerable to reinterpretation and manipulation than
those dealing with quantum gravity.
Science can
be manipulated in multiple ways. For example, studies that are based on
statistical methods can have problems with how samples are taken. Problems can
be defined in slewed language. The three main problems with ideological
influence have to do with: 1) the suppression of
scientific findings, 2) the negation of the
scientific method as a way of arriving at credible conclusions, and 3) the definition of phenomena in ways that make enquiry
difficult or impossible.
An example
of the first category, the suppression of scientific findings, would be governmental
reports that deny or diminish scientific evidence, such as a report that was released
by the United States federal government on September 2, 2025, by the Make
America Healthy Again Commission that stated that herbicides, pesticides and
insecticides are only a “possible” health concern (Baletti, 2025). This
affirmation goes in the face of years of research by independent scientists
such as one was recently published by Shekhar, Khosya, Thakur, Mahajan, et al
(2024).
The second
case, the negation of the scientific method, can be illustrated by the supposed
“sightings” of paranormal phenomena or unidentified flying objects, and their
interpretation as spiritual or extraterrestrial happenings. Another example of
this case would be the declarations by The Flat Earth Society (n.d.) that claims
that the Earth is not a sphere, based on the simple experience of looking at
the horizon. In these examples systematic observation, methodological clarity, clear
information about findings, and a transparent examination of previous
literature on the topics discussed are all absent.
The third
case, the definition of phenomena to be studied, can be exemplified by the many
characterizations of the term “life” when referring to the decision to abort a
pregnancy or declare death in cases of long-term state of coma or disease.
KNOWLEDGE
AND ITS HISTORICAL SUPRESION
In this
section we will consider particular historical and legendary instances of the
intentional suppression of learning and knowledge. Each offers the opportunity
to examine the motives and the social and political contexts in which this
suppression occurred. The section has two parts: one dedicated to religious
silencing of awareness, and another to ideological censorship. They are all
concrete cases in which the capacity for human discernment has been modified in
order to sustain given power structures. At the end of each part, we will make
a brief summary of the factors involved.
Divine
suspicion
Mirriam-Webster’s
dictionary (online, n.d.) defines religion as: “a cause, principle, or system
of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”, and also as “a body of beliefs and
practices regarding the supernatural and the worship of one or more deities”.
These two definitions can guide our exploration of how religious practices have
defined mystical beliefs, and how they have used them to suppress other ways of
conceiving the world.
Religions
can be conceptually separated from other understandings of the world because of
their references to divine beings, eternal truths, and also because of their
long historical domination. Although the Greek Stoics and Skeptics from ancient
Greece opened the possibility of creating knowledge based on reason and
rational thought, it has only been since the 17the century in Europe that rational
thinking has taken root in popular culture. Even today, however, there are
power conflicts between religion, ideology and science.
Bentzen
& Gokmen (2022) cite Weber’s (1922) theory of legitimization that suggests
that rulers can legitimize their power through either democracy, aristocracy,
or religion. Weber felt, however, that the legitimization of democracy through
an appeal to divine will is not an efficient choice. Democracy requires the
coexistence of multiple world views, and a certain equality of political ranking
among the citizens in the countries where it functions. The motto es: “one
person, one vote”, not “God’s will be done”
Organized religion
has almost always had a hierarchical structure and has appealed to
authoritarian strategies. Bentzen & Gokmen found that “even for societies of
similar culture, […] the prevalence of high gods goes hand-in-hand with
stratification.”[8] These
authors cite literature that indicates that “the state is more likely to
repress knowledge production […] when the populace is more religious.”
Furthermore, divine authority justifies class discrimination by declaring that
it is divinely ordained.[9]
It is
important to keep in mind that the chief ambition of a centralized power system
is to maintain the authority and physical well-being of its principal leaders,
that is, the main objective a such a system is its self-preservation and the
safeguarding of its elite members.
In the
following paragraphs we will examine several legends and cases that describe
how the spread of knowledge has been hindered through divine intervention.
After these initial reflections we will consider how ideology has been used in
similar ways.
Eve in
the Garden of Eden
Michael A. Sherlock
(2016) observes that:
“A large portion of the book of Genesis was
either first written or finally redacted whilst the Jews were in exile in
Babylon, sometime around the sixth century B.C.E..[14]. This is one explanation for why many of the
earlier myths of the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans found
their way into this multi-source collection of Hebrew texts we now call the
book of Genesis.”
The Old
Testament book of Genesis offers two creation stories. In the first one Jehovah
uses speech to develop a master plan of the universe that includes the sun, the
Earth, animals and man. In the second He is “a human-like figure who walks in
the garden and, like a potter working with clay, has a hands-on,
trial-and-error approach to creation” (McDonnell, 2024). After creating light,
darkness, water, and the rest of the physical world, He created "the animals […]
the beast of the earth [… ] and everything that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis,
1-25), then He created Adam, and then Eve, as the final part of His handiwork. Adam and Eve were created “in
His image”, and had many of his attributes, but they were innocent, in the
sense that they had no notion of good and evil. God wanted them to stay that
way, inoffensive and harmless companions in His new world. And although He put
a tree in the center of their garden that would give them, if they were to eat
its fruit, a knowledge of good and evil, and He told them not to touch it.
We might
ask, why did he put such a temptation right there in the middle of everything? God
may have thought that, lacking an incentive to eat that fruit, they would
ignore it. Perhaps the tree of knowledge was a sort of necessary presence, a
counter-weight to the garden’s artlessness.
But the
serpent arrived to tempt, first Eve, then Adam. He told Eve that God didn’t want his creations
to be wise, and for that reason he prohibited that fruit. It’s a curious
situation because, it was God himself that gave them access to it. Eve saw that
the fruit looked good, and furthermore, when the snake told her that she and
Adam would become wise after eating it, she was even more interested.
God punished
all of them for having eaten the fruit of knowledge. The serpent is the
tempter, and the punishment he receives is the worst of all of them; God
declares: “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!” (Genesis
3:14). Eve is the first to eat the fruit and as a punishment God essentially
takes away all her freedom: “…your husband […] will rule over you” (Genesis
3:16). Adam is condemned to work the land in order to survive.
This tree is
called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, basically a moral and
ethical knowledge. However, from the Hebrew University we learn that “Interestingly,
in Hebrew both the word for ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’ share the same root Y-D-A
{י-ד-ע} and so does the Hebrew word for ‘information’ (Admin., 2022).
Thus, we
may extend the meaning to knowledge in general, and as the same source
emphasizes, “knowledge is power”. If we are to assume that the tree gave access
to all kinds of knowledge, we must ask why would God consider that this was not
appropriate for mankind? Could it be because of the dangers of power
relationships? Perhaps God wanted his children emotionally “pure” of doubts,
questioning, and the menace of the constant question of “why?”.
There are
several interesting reflections that can be made of this account. The first is
that a hierarchical relationship is established. God and his court are in
charge. Second, after the “fall” man must work to be able to eat. Third, it is
not clear why God did not want mankind to have access to “knowledge”. Finally,
humanity’s first ranking system (between men and women) is established. The
Book of Genesis does not elaborate on later power phenomena, nor class
differentiations, nor the submissions caused by conquest, but later on in the
Old Testament, these other differences do appear.
Prometheus
In Greek
mythology there is a different story of divine prohibitions and rebellion.
There are certain similarities: in both the Old Testament accounts and Greek
legend there are divine figures that deny knowledge to mankind, and this denial
results in rebellion and punishment. But the Greek story is more brutal and
intransient. The early Greek god Zeus
did not want humanity to have control over fire because -and he was explicit here-
it was a source of power, but Prometheus, the Titan who defied him, stole it
and boldly gave it to humankind. He rebelled against Zeus, and paid a high
price for his sacrifice.
Just like
the fruit of the tree in Eden, fire may be considered to be a metaphor for education
and wisdom: it has been used to symbolize the light of knowledge that dispels the
darkness of ignorance. Rogerson (2024) observes that fire is a symbol of
knowledge, and reason. Thus, “Prometheus is often considered the founder of human
arts and sciences. Fire is a potent symbol across various cultures, often
representing enlightenment, knowledge, and transformation.” But in the case
of Prometheus, he is very explicit in
describing the kinds of knowledge he gave to mankind.
The Greek
poet Aeschylus (n.d.) depicted humanity before they
received the gift of fire, as “utterly without knowledge”. He makes Prometheus
describe humans as “Moiled…” and declare himself as their savior. He felt that
they formed a downtrodden mass …
until I the rising of the stars
Showed them, […]
number, the most excellent
Of all inventions, I for them devised,
And gave them writing that retaineth all [….]
I was the first that yoked unmanaged beasts,
To serve as slaves with collar and with pack […],
and
Tamed to the rein and drove in wheeled cars
The horse, of sumptuous pride the ornament.
And those sea-wanderers with the wings of cloth,
The shipman's waggons, none but I contrived
These manifold inventions for mankind….
When Zeus
prohibited humans from having access to fire (and knowledge), he made the same
gesture as the Hebrew God, but in this case his motives were those of a tyrant.
Prometheus, in defying Zeus, took on a role similar to that of the Hebrew serpent.
The difference is in their motives: for Prometheus, giving humans access to
fire was an act of love, for the serpent, giving them access to knowledge was a
crafty power-play. The roles are completely changed.
Aeschylus
(n.d.) in his play, Prometheus Bound[10],
portrays Zeus as a ruthless, cruel tyrant. Prometheus, not only has stolen fire
for the benefit of humans, he has defied celestial power. To punish him, Zeus
has ordered him to be chained to a rock to be tortured for all eternity by an
eagle that will eat his liver out every day, only to have it regrow each night.
Prometheus is depicted by Aeschylus as defiant. Aeschylus has the chorus
declare to Prometheus: “This is thy wage for loving humankind” (n.d.). He calls
Zeus a tyrant whose only justification is to rule forever: “What lot for Zeus
save world-without-end reign?” (Ibid.) And in defiance of Zeus, Prometheus says
(Ibid.):
“Lo, I am rockfast, and thy words are waves
That weary me in vain. Let not the thought
Enter thy mind, that I, in awe of Zeus,
Shall change my nature for a girl's, or beg
The
Loathed beyond all loathing-with my hands…. “
For
Prometheus, Zeus is “the Loathed beyond all loathing”. [11]
Religious
persecution of knowledge in Europe and America
René
Ostberg (2025) has given a general description of what the Holy See is: It is
the Roman Catholic Church’s seat of government, whose chief authority is the pope
as the bishop of Rome. “Seat” refers to the episcopal chair he occupies. In
this capacity he makes decisions on issues of faith and morality for Catholics
throughout the world. The Vatican’s administrative center in Vatican City, an
independent state established in 1929. Ostberg says The Vatican “also functions
as a nonterritorial institution whose authority endures even when there is no
pope, during sede vacant (“empty seat”), such as the interim between a
pope’s death and the election of his successor.” Thus, its authority is, for
its followers, both timeless and without spatial limitations.
In medieval
times the church responded to challenges to its religious interpretations with
certain aggression. The Inquisition was founded in 1184 to combat the heresy presented
by the Cathars, that would become the Huguenot challenge to Catholic authority,
and eventually the Protestant defiance in its varied forms. Tribunals were set
up all over Christian Europe to deal with heresy. Later these tribunals became the
Spanish Inquisition.
The
church’s authority has been challenged on numerus occasions, most famously by
Renaissance thinkers. Perhaps the most well-known trials occurred in the
Italian peninsula when Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei were judged guilty of
heresy. Giordano Bruno proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by
their own planets, in addition to other more theological pronouncements. The
Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in 1600. Later, in
1633, after Galileo defended the idea of heliocentrism, the Roman Inquisition arrested
and tried him. His books were banned and he was ordered to abjure his claims.
Sandra
Miesel (2002) describes another kind of persecution: witch-burning. She says:
“It
peaked in the 17th century, during the rationalist age of Descartes, Newton,
and St. Vincent de Paul. [….] Catholics and Protestants hunted witches with
comparable vigor. Church and state alike tried and executed them. [….The
persecution of witches] was a vicious misogynist tract. It depicted women as
the sexual playmates of Satan, declaring: All witchcraft comes from carnal
lust, which is in women insatiable...”
She
estimates that “30,000 to 50,000 women [were] killed during the 400 years from
1400 to 1800.”
Who were
the witches? First of all, they constituted an already discriminated group
(women as a sex) and those who were accused typically lived in certain
isolation and claimed access to varied forms of expertise. Second, they often
offered natural remedies and treatments for the sick, generally for the more
impoverished classes. They tended to lead solitary lives, and claimed to have
access to a kind of exclusive knowledge. Their curative abilities often were superior
to those of the male physicians of the day. Also, they tended to keep their
know-how to themselves, although their neighbors might know about their
capacities, and go to them in times of need. There was a certain degree of
mystery about them, and they defied the generally accepted norm of feminine
subservience to men. Many people suspected them of having mysterious,
non-traditional powers. The accusations against them often referred to sexual
misconduct.[12] They
were perfect marks for the aggression of their overly-traditional neighbors.
In these
reflections about the power religion has to influence man’s access to knowledge
we have reviewed instances of how hierarchical, organized faith systems
conceive education in its widest sense. It must be said that these systems
represent power structures that are similar to non-religious ones when they
become tyrannical. It is interesting that sacred accounts have explicitly
included the ambivalence between power and learning. From the beginning two
elements are clear: the first is that knowledge was always recognized as a form
of power. The second one is that mankind has always wanted to know. Eve
represents this basic curiosity. Although there have always been those who side
with repression and censorship in order to maintain their own group’s
coherence, there have also been rebels who want to know. Finally, the
repression of women has always been a part of culture: it has been a divine
mandate at least since Old Testament times. And women have always defied it.
This is an ongoing struggle.
Ideological
influences and science
In the
twentieth century people no longer burned witches. But there have been legal
persecutions against people who might doubt strict and exclusive
interpretations of Biblical and ideological authority.
In a famous
legal challenge to what can be taught in public schools, in 1925, in the United
States, the State of Tennessee accused a high school teacher, John Thomas
Scopes of explaining Darwin’s theory of human evolution in class. The theory
had been outlawed by the Butler Act earlier that year. In the trial Scopes was legally
represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Scopes was found
guilty, but the verdict was later overturned.
The Scopes
trial famously combined science, ideology, and religion. Curiously, some of
those that defended teaching evolution in schools felt that it might eventually
be consistent with religion.
The fundamentalists felt that no teaching
should deviate at all from the Old Testament creation story. It was a moment in
modern history in which science clashed directly, publicly, and legally with
religion, and in which certain ideological connections were evident. On one
hand, a literal interpretation of the Bible was supported by the power
structure in the state of Tennessee. On the other hand, the role of the ACLU
was ideologically relevant. The ACLU financed Scopes defense in support of
issues such as academic freedom, free speech, and the danger of creating a
state religion.
In the
example of the Scopes trial, we have an attempt to repress scientific
teachings, but within a democratic society. In certain areas in the United
States where fundamentalist protestant doctrines formed the basis for justifying
racial discrimination, the proponents of this bigotry feared the arrival of new
information (a common biological origin for all human beings) that might weaken
the control they held over the former slaves that were considered inferior. We
will review racial discrimination below.
In this
case, progressive ideological interests such as the ACLU added new voices to
the argument that came from the ethical stance that declares: “All men are
created equal”. Doctrinal and ideological differences created a new dialogue
with religious diversity.
Modern
science was represented in this conflict by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Martin
(n.d.) defines science as:
The word “science” derives from the Latin
scientia, or knowledge. It has historically been closely associated with
philosophy. At least since the Renaissance, the term has acquired connotations
of theoretical, organized, and experiential knowledge.
It is both
a body of knowledge and a method of inquiry that includes the systematic search
for evidence -which must be explicit and repeatable- and the development of
theories based on this evidence. Karl Popper went further: he claimed that
ideally, science progresses by discarding false theories. He said that all the
studies and experiments in which the hypotheses are accepted cannot confirm a finding.
But when a methodologically acceptable study produces a single counterexample,
then the theory, in its given form, must be considered false. Popper considered
that all theories should be stated in ways that make them vulnerable to
falsification.
On the
other hand, the term “ideology” has multiple acceptations. It is used to
describe the justification of secular, naturally-occurring or induced belief
systems. Examples of ideologies include liberalism, conservatism, socialism,
communism, theocracy, agrarianism, totalitarianism, democracy, colonialism, and
globalism (Drew, 2023).
The terms
are not fixed. For example, “communism” may refer to “Marxist ideology” that
develops and extends the economic theories of Carlos Marx and Friedrich Engels.
It can include public, community, collective, or cooperative systems. It can be
related to the idea of “false ideology” in which a belief system is declared
untenable by another belief system.
Ideologies
do not change because of the scientific refutation of the system, but rather
its substitution by another one. Ideologies often postulate “first principles,
such as racial purity, class struggle, or free markets, from which other ideas
automatically follow” (Martin. n.d.). Like
religions, ideologies are often beliefs that stabilize political and social
power structures. They help create a sense of group identity. Those who accept
them are usually not aware that these systems are, in fact, induced beliefs that
form, and are often learned in an anthropological sense, and are considered “reality”,
as defined by one´s reference group. They are strongly related to the personal
identity of the believer, and his or her sense of ethics and morality.
In this
essay we refer to ideology as a body of relatively organized beliefs that
can be distinguished from science or philosophy because of the informality of its
rational development, or by its lack of methodological clarity, although some
ideologies, such as liberal democracy, have been deliberated in varied forms.
We
formulate this definition in this way even though in the past science has
sometimes been methodologically corrupted in order to obtain ideologically
desired results. In these cases, the scientific method was never really put in
doubt; rather the method was corrupted and the results were declared “scientific”
without any real evidence.
For
example, eugenics was a field of study that had the purpose of inventing racial
distinctions in humans that could justify discrimination, abuse, and even the
systematic the liquidation of its members.
In this
sense, Nescolarde-Selva, Usó-Doménech, & Gash (2017) consider science as a
form of ideology with its own methods and perspectives:
[….
Considering science to be] an ideology, science provides a way of organizing
experience so that what we think we know can be tested against what we
experience in experiments so moving beyond subjective interpretations.”
Science,
however, has the capacity to immediately self-correct. Martin (n.d.) reminds us
of Samuel George Morton’s measurements of cranial volumes that purported to
show that Europeans had larger skulls than other groups such as Africans, and
thus, presumably, greater intelligence. His methods proved to be compromised by
an intentional selection bias, and were rejected.
Throughout
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were
multiple attempts to reframe eugenics and “prove” white European superiority.
Curiously, the final push that led to the collapse of this kind of work was
ethical rather that scientific. The horror of the Nazi extermination camps revealed
eugenics for what it is: blatant, cruel, and unjustified racism. Studies using
physical measurements, intelligence tests, and achievement statistics were
reviewed and methodologically corrected.
And herein
lies both science’s weakness and its strength: once the methodological errors
are detected, they can be corrected, and the new results can be made public.
This does not happen either in religion or ideology, both of which proclaim their
pretendedly irrefutable “truths” that can only be changed by their replacement
with new cultural and sociopolitical thought-systems.
In this
section we have reviewed how ideology can suppress science. In the example of
the Scopes trial that we referred to before, ideology (in the form of liberal
democracy) confronted religion and offered a space for science to have a voice.
In these
examples we show how ideology can attempt to suppress knowledge. We have
discussed how repressive ideologies can influence scientific research through
certain (intentional) questionable investigative methods, especially when the
research themes have to do with ongoing political debates such as racial
equality.
We have
differentiated ideology and science in methodological terms. In what follows we
will consider how religion and ideology work to fortify the power aspirations
of present day cultural and political interests and individuals.
CONTEMPORARY
POLITICAL STRUGGLES TO CONTROL SCIENCE
We have
defined religion and ideology as two important belief systems that tend to be
associated with power structures, and that are often used to control the
populations where they operate. Science is also affiliated with power mostly
through its applications in industry and war, and in our modern era, the
industries associated with the Internet and data processing.
Governments
will finance scientific research, but often their main interest is the
production of mechanisms that can be used in domination and the production of
wealth. This coexistence between wealth and technology is loosely related to the
scientific method, which in itself, is very often suspect in the general
population. Findings that challenge religious and ideological stances are often
denied or even resisted. Science has been used as a rhetorical menace, that is,
an invented ideological danger-term, whose findings are suspect.
Two examples
of this suspicion
Racial
differences
There is a
general similarity in the appearance of humans. We all walk upright, and we are
no longer completely covered with fur. Our general facial characteristics, the
form of our hands and feet, and our skin texture are all virtually the same. We
have some small differences in facial features, skin color and hair texture,
and these differences form the basis of categories we group under the ideological
term “race”.
This term
is historically and culturally charged with political and questionable ethical
stances that have created tensions in the human family since the beginning of
recorded history. There is, however, a overall biological unity in human
beings. Smedley, Takezawa, & Wade say:
A number of scholars and other educated people
now believe that the concept of race has outlived its usefulness. Social
scientists, biologists, historians, and philosophers now point out that
increasing migration and changes in attitudes toward human differences have
brought about extensive intermingling of peoples [… M]any scholars perceive
that “race” is becoming more and more irrelevant and may eventually be
eliminated as people increasingly are recognized in terms of their ethnic or
cultural identities, occupations, education, and local affiliations. [….] [M]olecular
genetic studies show that genomic differences between even far-flung peoples
are minuscule compared with variations within each local population.
Accordingly, for modern H. sapiens, race is a mere cultural construct with no
biological basis.
Cronick (2024)
refers to the historical effect of power on racial discourse:
The album of the human family is full of ideas
of conflict and rivalries. They are all successive moments, but not linear,
since conquests, massacres, cruel punishments, despots, the demands of cults
and slavery have coexisted alongside people’s longing for justice and peace and
liberating thought. This coexistence endures: in American democracies after the
eighteenth century, they still had slavery and practiced massacres of
indigenous peoples in their territories. All these motives and reasons are
still found together in the same villages in a sort of collective unconscious,
and people fight each other over them. Cultures contain the germ of their
changes, but they also carry resistance to reforms.
Thus, scientific,
biological data suggest that race is a meaningless as a genetic category.
However, it is often the motive for intolerance, and even hate-based
violence.
Vaccinations
Vaccines
have a history that goes back several centuries. It has long been known that
brief exposures to certain diseases such as smallpox can trigger immune
responses, and people have attempted to use this strategy to avoid contacting
the full-blown disease. Of course, this was a dangerous practice, because it
was impossible to control de degree of exposure. The United Nations’ World
Health Organization (WHO, n.d.) recounts the first recorded vaccination:
In May 1796, English physician Edward Jenner
expands on this discovery and inoculates 8-year-old James Phipps with matter
collected from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid. Despite suffering a
local reaction and feeling unwell for several days, Phipps made a full
recovery. Two months later, in July 1796, Jenner inoculates Phipps with matter
from a human smallpox sore in order to test Phipps’ resistance. Phipps remains
in perfect health, and becomes the first human to be vaccinated against
smallpox. The term ‘vaccine’ is later coined, taken from the Latin word for
cow, vacca. [13]
It is not
necessary here to give a complete account of the development of controlled
vaccinations that have resulted from at least two centuries of scientific
research. What is important is to recognize how an original intuition regarding
the spread of disease became a rational and controlled approach to universal
health care. Vaccinations have long been regarded as one of science’s major
triumphs.
However, recently
this strategy has been questioned in the United States and other places. Eiden,
Mackie, Modi, Drakeley et al (2025, p 6) observe that .
[…] members of the American public do not have
a clear understanding of what vaccines are and how they work; neither do they
accurately grasp what immunity is and how the immune system works. When
people reduce vaccination to the process of injecting someone with a disease to
inoculate them against it, they often see it as a dangerous poison and an
antidote at the same time […. Also the presence of ] thiomersal (or
thimerosal), a mercury compound removed from most routine vaccines in the late
1990s, has been linked with neurotoxicity and increased rates of autism diagnoses
for some people, despite no evidence of harm.
This
linkage of autism and vaccines has been exploited by political interests that
see benefits for themselves in inducing a fear of scientifically-generated
health care. In fact, the present national Secretary of Health Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., has announced that he believes that most vaccines, especially the
one that prevents the disease of measles, may cause autism. During the COVID
pandemic (beginning in 2019), he was using his anti-vaccine stance to appeal to
like-minded voters through his non-profit organization Children’s Health Defense.
Now, in his position of influence as secretary of health, he has a certain
following, and the state of Florida has announced that it plans to end all
vaccine mandates.
This
strategy has had some political success, although it has also generated a vociferous
opposition among other people. The success does not have to do with health
strategies. It comes, rather from the creation of an alternate “reality”; by
rejecting science, political figures are able to use the oldest ideological
strategy of them all: develop a set of beliefs that the figures in power
control, and in which they become a sort of “protector” of their followers.
Vaccines
have saved more lives than any other medical invention in history.
Nevertheless, there are people who fear them. This fear is being used to raise
general ideological objections to science in general (as a
hypothetical-deductive approach to understanding). It has been gathered up into
a mix of other fears such as those that lead to the rejection of immigrants and
mixed racial settings.
Vaccine
rejectors feel that immigrants and people of color are more dangerous sources
of disease than their unvaccinated neighbors. Dag Wollebæk, Audun Fladmoe, Kari
Steen‐Johnsen &, Øyvind Ihlen (2022) say that “Refusing to vaccinate
appears to be a logical continuation to objecting to other government‐imposed
infringements of individual liberty.” It is, in their appreciation, mediated by
lower trust in the institutions, and belief in conspiracies.
Estepa and
Greenberg (2020) refer to how certain neighborhoods are characterized by what
they call a “spatial logic” in which statistics about health, crime, and other
socioeconomic outcomes are concentrated in certain geographic areas. People
“self-select into communities that allow them to avoid contact with others who
do not share their social class, ethnicity, political views, or cultural
tastes” (p. 5). One of these characteristics may be vaccine refusal. People
move into these areas partly because of what they perceive as a certain
homogeneity of beliefs and social and racial status; long-term residents are
mutually influenced by their neighbors’ prevailing beliefs and ideological
tendencies. Estepa and Greenberg state that “the enclave-like features of the
pockets could reinforce the tendency to opt out [of vaccinating] by reducing
the social stigma [….] and by giving a false sense of protection from disease.
Consequently, vaccine refusal may be viewed as both a safe and socially
acceptable decision in these unique settings” (p.2).
These
considerations show how disparate belief clusters can combine and form an
ideological wall against scientific explanations. These clusters then gain
force by their allegiance against a common enemy, in this case, science.
FINAL
THOUGHTS
This essay
does not include the Renaissance philosophy that led up to the development of
the modern scientific method. It was a complex movement, and produced varied
approaches that gradually offered an alternative for theological and traditional
explanations. We can mention a few pioneers:
a) Galileo
Galilei (born on February 15, 1564, died: January 8, 1642, father of
observational astronomy, and probably the originator of the modern scientific
method,
b) Johannes
Kepler, born on December 27, 1571, died on November 15, 1630; he was a
mathematician, astronomer, and is remembered for his work on optics. It is
interesting that this work paved the way for other systematic observation using
his technology,
René
Descartes (1596-1650), initiated mathematical investigations in analytic
geometry. He established a method of reflection which became Western
rationalism and was different from English empiricism.
Isaac
Newton (January 4, 1643 – 31 March 1727) described the law of universal
gravitation, and the development of infinitesimal calculus.
The creeds,
the ideologies, and the sciences that were born from these thinkers became permeable
in the sense that their contents flowed from one system to another. At the same
time, and according to the time in which they existed, they created
exclusivity. Copernicus may have had his religious beliefs, but those who
judged him had other ways of thinking, immiscible with his, although they came
from the same traditions. There is no Big Bang moment when religion became
philosophy and philosophy became science.
These
thinkers used a variety of rationally explicit methods that became publicly
available and could be evaluated and criticized. The general population had, of
course, several impediments to understanding them. First, people needed to
understand the mathematics and reasoning involved. Second, scientific
discoveries are never final declarations about the world, and therefore they
involve uncertainty, which can produce anxiety. Third, scientific knowledge is
not a good framework for a sense of group identification, unless, of course, one
is a scientist. And fourth, science, as we have seen, has cast doubt on many
culturally induced beliefs, such as racial superiority and traditional
viewpoints about health and other long-standing views.
There is a
final observation about science, which we referred to above. Scientific
findings do not function well as support mechanisms for maintaining power
structures. Except for the benefits that technology gives people, there are few
emotionally charged attractions that invite us to “believe” in a given
discovery. In any case, in science the participants never “believe in” the
results of a given piece of research. They either accept them or reject them as
adequate or inadequate given the history and the trajectory of a given line of
inquiry. Thus, for scientists, evolutionary theory is now plausibly “true”,
although certain modifications can be made, such as the relative importance of
competition and cooperation in genetic modification. Curiously it is one of the
major targets for anti-science activists. Popper (1967) said:
The birth of modern science and modern
technology was inspired by this optimistic epistemology whose main spokesmen
were Bacon and Descartes. They taught that there was no need for any man to
appeal to authority in matters of truth because each man carried the sources of
knowledge in himself; either in his power of sense- perception which he may use
for the careful observation of nature, or in his power of intellectual
intuition which he may use to distinguish truth from falsehood by refusing to
accept any idea which is not clearly and distinctly perceived by the intellect
(p 9-10).
Of course,
technology is related to science. It is a byproduct of research. Technology can
turn into production and generate wealth, the accumulation of which is
attractive for those who manufacture cars, airplanes, computers, medicines,
tools, fuels and other products. And the possession of effective military
equipment, also a byproduct of scientific research, is vital for any leader
that wishes to stay in power. But for everyday people, technology can never enable
a belief or identity system. It just facilitates everyday tasks like mobilizing
people and things over long distances, washing their clothes, or calling a
friend.
Thus, when
groups are searching for identity, and tyrants are searching for power, they
turn to a religion or ideology that can be used to create permanent, inflexible
value structures. This may work for a while, even for centuries as in the
Middle Ages. Still, as Hammand (p. 168) says: “And yet in strange contrast to
this is the fact that man has always known that knowledge was man's right.” Of
course, she is talking about mankind, and we remember the Old Testament figure
of Eve. There will also always be groups that cling to comfortable, or
guilt-quenching beliefs with no truth value. But there will also be figures
like Eve, Prometheus, and Giordano Bruno that defy censorship.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] According to Popper, empirical
theories can never be proven, but they can be falsified, that is, science can
show that they have erred in their pronouncements regarding nature. He referred
to the need for testing hypotheses derived from these theories, with the
purpose of declaring them untenable. Epistemologically, accepting a hypothesis
does not really confirm it. It only demonstrates that the theory has not (yet)
been disproven.
[2] In an entertaining publication, the
History Collection (n.d.) has a list of 16 creation stories from all over the
world. Most involve deities that give form to the world and life.
[3] In this first reference to
“science” we include all reasoned knowledge. Thus, we include the kind lo
thinking that prefaced modern science: the Greek schools such as Platonists,
the Aristotelians, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics and others. We
include medieval Neoplatonism, Donato Acciaiuoli, and Desiderius Erasmus. We cannot forget the
great Moorish thinkers from Al Andalus such as the astronomer Ibn Yunus, and
the physicist Alhazen. Also, thinkers
from the European Enlightenment such as Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, John
Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Adam Smith, and
Immanuel Kant -and all the other systematic thinkers that paved the way for modern science.
[4] Plutarch (El-Abbadi, 1998) claimed
that Julius Caesar was responsible for at least part of the destruction of the
library of Alexandria as part of an act of war in the year 48 B.C.E.
[5] “Divine kings are not unique to Europe, Christianity, or to a specific time. They existed in Ancient Egypt, the Sumerian Kingdom, Japan, Tibet, Thailand, and within the Roman, Inca, and Aztec Empires, among other places” (Bentzen & Gokmen (2022).
[6] The Old Testament also tells
how divine law descended from God to mankind.
[7] From the tenth century to the
fifteenth century, scholars, poets and incipient science flourished in
Al-Andalus, and a large royal library was reported to have almost a half
million volumes (MSW, 2024).
[8] “A high god is defined as a “spiritual being who is believed to have created all reality and/or to be its ultimate governor” (Bentzen & Goikmen, 2022).
[9] Class discrimination based on
divine command has been almost universal, and includes India’s caste system,
medieval serfs, and slaves throughout history who have worked (and work) without
any hope of change because their gods had declared their worth.
[10] Prometheus Bound was written
in the V century B.C.E. in Aeschylus’ home in Eleusis near Athens, Greece.
[11] Prometheus was eventually freed by
Hercules from his eternal torment on Mount Kazbek..
[12] In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel
Hawthorne a young woman from Massachusetts in the United States, Hester Prynne
is accused of adultery, and is forced to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her blouse.
There have been many novels on this topic. Tony McAleavy describes six
historical witch trials (McAleavy, 2022).
[13] The ethical problems with this experiment
are evident. It was not at all clear how the boy would react to his
“inoculation”. There were no controls in place and no previous (formal)
research on the subject.
